India enacts law to ensure speedy public service delivery
March 7, 2013, 11:57 am

ndia has only recently started using technology to replace outdated public services delivery systems [AP]

In a boost to the ill-served public service delivery system in India, the government has approved new legislature aimed at providing time-bound delivery of essential services like passports, pensions and birth and death certificates to citizens.

The ‘Right of Citizens for Time-Bound Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill’ was approved by the Union Cabinet at a meeting chaired by Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, on Thursday.

The bill envisages a penalty of up to Rs. 50,000 against a government official failing to provide his or her duties, official sources said.

India has witnessed a decade of rapid economic growth but the key challenge that faces policymakers at both central and state levels is to ensure ‘inclusive’ growth.

The new bill lays down an obligation upon every public authority to publish a citizen’s charter, stating that the time within which specified goods shall be supplied and services be rendered.

It also provides for a grievance redressal mechanism for non-compliance of its provisions.

The proposed legislation, led by the department of administrative reforms and public grievances, also mandates a public authority to establish a call centre, customer care centre, help desk and people’s support system to ensure time-bound delivery of services.

According to its provisions, a person aggrieved by the decision of the commission may refer an appeal before the Ombudsman at the Centre (in case of decision by the Centre’s public grievances redressal commission) and the representatives in the states.

All services provided by both the Centre and the State governments will be extended to citizens in a time-bound manner under the bill.

India has only recently started using technology to replace outdated public services delivery systems in the country that are plagued by corruption and hefty leakages.

India’s public service delivery system’s adoption of information and communications technology (ICT) comes with a 20-year lag to the industrialised world.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.